Heartless
by KowaretaTsubasa
Summary: [Oneshot] [Yukina centric] She didn’t hate him and she didn’t cry because somewhere between it all, in that haunting hateless look, were the words: You cannot stop what I become as you did not stop what I became.


**Heartless**

By: Kowareta

Yukina-centric. Takes place during Yukina's time at Tarukane's stronghold. A fic dedicated to finding Yukina's hidden strength. Got tired of all the Wimpy!Yukina fics.

Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho.

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Her hands were made of winter. They lay politely in her lap, two ghostly figments: pale, delicate, and colder than anything he had ever known. When she shifted her wrists, her palms kissed, and her fingers curled between each other.

They were hands that waited for something. Patiently. Quietly. They were cold and delicate and whispered to him that they had learned to wait forever as if their time here would not be noted by the individual that possessed them and _he_ would become forgettable over time.

He'd broken them, those hands.

She'd screamed in pain, but she did not cry. She would not cry for him. The girl refused to be broken. However, cold things didn't break, Tarukane knew, they _cracked_.

She stood on legs that carried her no matter what happened. They didn't carry her gracefully or elegantly, but they always held her up as if she would always be there, forever. She traveled as though getting somewhere was only a matter of time and having enough patience for things to change and for conflict to slide away.

The girl stood on legs that promised to withstand the winds of time.

He'd broken _them_ too, and she still refused to cry.

Her skin was soft, as soft as any human woman he'd ever touched and it burned just as easily. A mere slip of paper and yet it scorched her skin and turned it raw. He stuck a few more around the room, satisfied that she could never escape if all she touched would do nothing but burn.

She shed no tears.

The demon wards scorched her skin and in turn she froze the room, revolutionizing her prison into her own icy domain where she alone would sit aloof, the sole ruler of the frosty realm...

…Where no thing could touch her guarded heart.

Heartless bitch.

He'd handed her over to professional torturers—men with dark eyes who had never quite learned that beating people long after they were awake to feel it was an awful thing to do. It was part of the job, for them, something to get paid for. Tarukane didn't know what they did; all he knew was what they were doing now wasn't working.

Perhaps the most terrible thing about her, this ugly, heartless bitch, was her eyes. No matter what he did to her, she didn't hate him for it, for all this pain, and somehow that was worse. She sat there as solid-looking as a glacier and never uttered a word. She took every abuse, every harsh word, every _thing_,and nothing was given back. The ice fortress prevailed.

Her clear gaze was worse than the wasted time spent forcing her to cry, or the money thrown out to anyone who could accurately and repetitively hit a girl, or even the sensation that tears were falling somewhere he could never find them. She looked at him, looked _through_ him, hinting that any effort to hate him would be as wasted as his efforts on her for she was stronger than anything he could imagine.

She saw through him with an impenetrable gaze, her small, thin form tense and glowing as she froze the room creating her icy realm again.

She suffered pain and agony at his command, she screamed and bled and resisted, but she never cried. She didn't hate him and she didn't cry because somewhere between it all, in that haunting hateless look, were the words: "You cannot stop what I become as you did not stop what I became."

Yukina didn't hate Tarukane because hating him would imply that he had some type of dominance over her. Hating him would mean that she had some kind of _respect_ and _acceptance_ of the powerlessness he brought out in people.

Tarukane had misjudged the sheer unforgiving bulk of winter. He thought he'd found a girl made of nothing but snow, but what he'd really discovered was a woman made of _winter_. Winter didn't hate and it didn't judge, but it had icicles for teeth and crossed the world through blizzards. You couldn't stop winter: either you outlasted it, or it outlasted you.

It didn't hate you if you lost. It didn't even hate you if you outlasted it. Winter always came back next year the same as before. Yukina hated no living thing because that would mean those lives held power over her.

No matter what Tarukane chose to do to Yukina it didn't mean much, it didn't mean anything at all.

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End file.
